1. Introduction

1.1 We are committed to safeguarding the privacy of our website visitors; in this policy, we explain how we will treat your personal information.

2.  Collecting personal information

2.1 Information we collect from CMEPEDIA:

ACCRECENT utilises CMEPEDIA's services for author registration. By navigating to CMEPEDIA's website and completing the author registration process, you may provide us with the following information: You have the option to withhold specific information, but doing so may limit your access to various CMEPEDIA services.

• • identifying information such as your name, address and phone numbers;
  • profile pictures, gender, date of birth, relationship status, interests and hobbies, educational details and employment details;
  • payment information;
  • address, telephone number, email address;
  • content of reviews and e-mails to us;
  • information and officially valid documents regarding identity and address information, including PAN numbers;
  • declaration of interest;
  • corporate and financial information; and
  • any other personal information that you choose to send to us.

2.2 Information we collect from ACCRECENT:

• • identifying information such as your name, address and phone numbers;
  • profile pictures, gender, date of birth, relationship status, interests and hobbies, educational details and employment details;
  • payment information;
  • address, telephone number, email address;
  • content of reviews, forms, suggestions and e-mails to us;
  • your team member’s email addresses;
  • any other personal information that you choose to send to us;

2.3 Automatic information

Examples of the information we collect and analyse include:

• • the internet protocol (IP) address that establishes your computer's internet connection;
  • your login credentials, email address, and password;
  • the geographical location of your device or computer;
  • metrics associated with your device usage, such as when it's in operation, application usage, connectivity data, and any instances of errors or event failures;
  • information about your computer and about your visits to and use of this website (including your browser type and version, operating system, referral source, length of visit, page views and website navigation paths);
  • metrics specific to CMEPEDIA and ACCRECENT Services, such as technical errors, your engagement with service features and content, your customized settings and backup data, the location of your device running an application, and information regarding uploaded images and files, including file names, dates, times, and image locations. Additionally, it covers version and time zone settings;
  • a comprehensive record of your web interactions on our websites, including the complete Uniform Resource Locator (URL) clickstream—indicating the path to, through, and from our websites—along with timestamps. This also encompasses the products and content you browsed or searched for, page responsiveness, download issues, the time spent on specific pages, and data on page interactions, such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse movements, frequency and pattern of service use;
  • information relating to any module you (attempted to) complete on our website.

3. Using your personal information

3.1 Personal information submitted to us through our website will be used for the purposes specified in this policy or on the relevant pages of the website.

3.2 We may use your personal information to:

• • administer our website and business;
  • personalise our website for you;
  • enable your use of the services available on our website;
  • we use your personal information to provide functionality, analyse performance, fix errors, and improve the usability and effectiveness of the CMEPEDIA and ACCRECENT Services;
  • send statements, invoices, receipts and payment information to you, and process payments;
  • communicate with you about your sales, products and services, and promotional offers via different channels (e.g., by phone, e-mail, chat);
  • send you non-marketing commercial communications;
  • send you email notifications that you have specifically requested;
  • send you our email newsletter if you have requested it (you can inform us at any time if you no longer require the newsletter);
  • send you marketing communications relating to our business or the businesses of carefully-selected third parties which we think may be of interest to you, by post or, where you have specifically agreed to this, by email or similar technology (you can inform us at any time if you no longer require marketing communications);
  • provide third parties with statistical information about our users (but those third parties will not be able to identify any individual user from that information);
  • deal with enquiries and complaints made by or about you relating to our website;
  • keep our website secure and prevent fraud;
  • verify compliance with the terms and conditions governing the use of our website (including monitoring private messages sent through our website's private messaging service);
  • to comply with laws. For instance, we collect from sellers information regarding the place of establishment and bank account information for identity verification and other purposes.

3.3 If you submit personal information for publication on our website, we will publish and otherwise use that information in accordance with the licence you grant to us.

3.4 If you or your course are selected and you are appointed as an author for that course, your name, declaration of interest, and bio will be displayed on CMEPEDIA's website under the author information. This allows users of the course to view relevant information about the authors.

3.5 Your privacy settings can be used to limit the publication of your information on our website and can be adjusted using privacy controls.

3.6 We will not, without your express consent, supply your personal information to any third party for the purpose of their or any other third party's direct marketing or the purpose of your professional (re-)registration.

3.7 All our website financial transactions are handled through our payment services provider CC Avenue.

 You can review the provider's privacy policy at https://www.ccavenue.com/privacy.jsp.

 We will share information with our payment services provider only to the extent necessary for the purposes of processing payments you make via our website, refunding such payments and dealing with complaints and queries relating to such payments and refunds.

4. Disclosing personal information

4.1 Customer information holds significant value within our business, and we want to clarify that we do not sell our customers' personal information to third parties. We only share our customers' personal information as outlined below, and this sharing is primarily with CMEPEDIA. and its controlled subsidiaries. These entities are either governed by the same privacy policies detailed in this notice or adhere to privacy practices that offer at least the same level of protection as articulated in this notice.

4.2 We may disclose your personal information to any of our employees, officers, insurers, professional advisers, agents, suppliers or subcontractors insofar as reasonably necessary for the purposes set out in this policy. The third-party service providers can access personal information needed to perform their functions but may not use it for other purposes. Further, they must process the personal information in accordance with applicable law.

4.3 Additionally, please note that your personal information, along with your submissions, which may include suggestions, authorship inquiries, invites sent to your team members, and course material submissions, are shared with our e-learning platform, CMEPEDIA

We may disclose your personal information:

• •  to the extent that we are required to do so by law;
  • in connection with any ongoing or prospective legal proceedings;
  • in order to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights (including providing information to others for the purposes of fraud prevention and reducing credit risk);
  • to the purchaser (or prospective purchaser) of any business or asset that we are (or are contemplating) selling; and
  • to any person who we reasonably believe may apply to a court or other competent authority for disclosure of that personal information where, in our reasonable opinion, such court or authority would be reasonably likely to order disclosure of that personal information.

• Except as provided in this policy, we will not provide your personal information to third parties.

5. International data transfers

5.1 Information that we collect may be stored and processed in and transferred between any of the countries in which we operate to enable us to use the information per this policy.

5.2 Information that we collect may be transferred to the following countries which do not have data protection laws equivalent to those in force in the European Economic area: the United States of America, Russia, Japan, China and India.

5.3 Personal information that you publish on our ACCRECENT or CMEPEDIA may be available worldwide via the Internet. We cannot prevent others from using or misuse of such information.

5.4 You expressly agree to the transfers of personal information described in this Section 5.

6. Retaining personal information

6.1 Section 6 sets out our data retention policies and procedures, which are designed to help ensure that we comply with our legal obligations in relation to the retention and deletion of personal information.

6.2 Personal information that we process for any purpose or purposes shall not be kept for longer than is necessary for that purpose or those purposes.

6.3 Notwithstanding the other provisions of this Section 6, we will retain documents (including electronic documents) containing personal data:

• • to the extent that we are required to do so by law;
  • if we believe that the documents may be relevant to any ongoing or prospective legal proceedings; and
  • in order to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights (including providing information to others for the purposes of fraud prevention and reducing credit risk).

7. Security of your personal information

7.1 We will take reasonable technical and organizational precautions to prevent your personal information's loss, misuse or alteration.

7.2 We will store all the personal information you provide on our secure (password- and firewall-protected) servers.

7.3 All electronic financial transactions entered into through our website will be protected by encryption technology.

7.4 You acknowledge that the transmission of information over the Internet is inherently insecure, and we cannot guarantee the security of data sent over the Internet.

7.5 You are responsible for keeping the password you use for accessing our website confidential; we will not ask you for your password (except when you log in to our website).

8. Amendments

8.1 We may update this policy from time to time by publishing a new version on our website.

8.2 You should check this page occasionally to ensure you are happy with any changes to this policy.

8.3 We may notify you of changes to this policy by email or through the private messaging system on our website.

9. Your rights

9.1 You may instruct us to provide you with any personal information we hold about you; provision of such information will be subject to:

• •  the payment of a fee (currently fixed at GBP 9.46; (999 INR; 11.63 USD); and
  • the supply of appropriate evidence of your identity (for this purpose, we will usually accept a photocopy of your passport certified by a solicitor or bank plus an original copy of a utility bill showing your current address).

9.2 We may withhold personal information that you request to the extent permitted by law.

9.3 You may instruct us at any time not to process your personal information for marketing purposes.

9.4 In practice, you will usually either expressly agree in advance to our use of your personal information for marketing purposes, or we will provide you with an opportunity to opt out of the use of your personal information for marketing purposes via Ghostery.

10. Third party websites

10.1 Our website includes hyperlinks to and details of third-party websites.

10.2 We have no control over, and are not responsible for, third parties' privacy policies and practices.

11. Updating information

11.1 Please let us know if the personal information that we hold about you needs to be corrected or updated.

12. Cookies

12.1 Our website uses cookies.

12.2  A cookie is a file containing an identifier (a string of letters and numbers) sent by a web server to a web browser and stored by the browser. The identifier is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server.

12.3 Cookies may be either "persistent" cookies or "session" cookies: a persistent cookie will be stored by a web browser and will remain valid until its set expiry date unless deleted by the user before the expiry date; a session cookie on the other hand, will expire at the end of the user session, when the web browser is closed.

12.4 Cookies do not typically contain any information that personally identifies a user, but personal information that we store about you may be linked to the information stored in and obtained from cookies.

12.5 We use both session and persistent cookies on our website.

12.6. We use cookies, pixels, and other technologies (collectively, "cookies") to recognize your browser or device, learn more about your interests, and provide you with essential features and services and for additional purposes, including:

• • We recognise you when you sign in to use our services. This allows us to provide you with product recommendations and other customised features and services.
  • Keeping track of items stored in your cart.
  • Conducting research and diagnostics to improve CMEPEDIA’s content, products, and services.
  • Preventing fraudulent activity.
  • Improving security.
  • Reporting. This allows us to measure and analyse the performance of our services.

12.7 Most browsers allow you to refuse to accept cookies; for example:

• • • in Microsoft Edge (version 134.0.3124.51), you can manage cookies by clicking the three-dot menu, selecting "settings," navigating to "privacy, search, and services," and adjusting the "cookies and site permissions" settings;
    • in Safari (version 18.2), go to "preferences," click "privacy," and choose to block cookies under the "cookies and website data" section;
    • in Mozilla Firefox (version 136.0) click the hamburger menu, select "settings," go to "privacy & security," and choose your desired cookie preferences under "cookies and site data."; and
    • in Google Chrome (version 135.0.7049.3), click the three-dot menu, select "settings," then navigate to "privacy and security," click "cookies and other site data," and select your preferred cookie settings. You can set your preferences via www.ghostery.com
  •  12.8 You can delete cookies already stored on your computer; for example:

• • • in Microsoft Edge (version 134.0.3124.51), click the three-dot menu in the top-right corner, select "settings," navigate to "privacy, search, and services," and under "clear browsing data," click "choose what to clear." Check "cookies and other site data," then click "clear now.";
    • in Safari (version 18.2), open the "Safari" menu and select "preferences." Go to the "privacy" tab, click "manage website data," and either click "remove all" to delete all cookies or select specific sites to remove and click "remove.";
    • in Mozilla Firefox (version 136.0), click the hamburger menu in the top-right corner and select "settings." Navigate to "privacy & security," scroll to the "cookies and site data" section, and click "clear data." Check "cookies and site data," then click "clear."; and
    • in Google Chrome (version 135.0.7049.3), click the three-dot menu in the top-right corner, go to "settings," then "privacy and security," and select "clear browsing data." Make sure "cookies and other site data" is selected, and then click "clear data."
  • 12.9 Deleting cookies will have a negative impact on the usability of many websites.

13. Complete withdrawal of consent

13.1 You have the right to completely withdraw your consent for the processing of any of your personal data, including data necessary for managing our website, providing services, and enhancing the overall user experience.

13.2 To completely withdraw your consent, including the deletion of your profile, please follow these steps:

• • Log in to your account on the CMEPEDIA website. You can delete your profile by navigating to 'My Profile' and choosing the 'Delete My Profile' option.
  • Please note that deleting your profile will result in losing access to your account and preventing you from using our services.
  • Once your profile is deleted, all associated personal data will be removed from our systems, except for any data that we are required to retain by law or for legitimate business purposes.

13.3 We may retain certain information about your account and transactions for record-keeping purposes and to comply with our legal obligations.

13.4 If you have any questions or need assistance with deleting your profile, please contact us using the contact information provided in Section 14 of this policy.

14. Our details

14.1 This website is owned and operated by ACCRECENT.

14.2 Our principal place of business is at Villa 5, Esteem Northwood, Blueberry street, Ramanashree California Gardens, Yelahanka 560064, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India.

14.3 You can contact us by writing to the business address given above, by using our website contact form, by email to cao@accrecent.com or by telephone on +91-8147-5267-66.

14.4 We are registered in India under GST registration number 29AUAPV8596N4ZA, and our registered office is at Villa 5 Esteem Northwood, Blueberry Street, Ramanashree California Gardens, Yelahanka 560064, Bengaluru, Karnataka.